April 07, 2015

Skillet Turkey Meatballs with Lemony Rice

When you hear "meatballs," what's the dish that comes to mind? We bet it's a pasta dish with meatballs swimming in a red tomato sauce.

That's precisely why we earmarked this recipe: The idea of a lemony meatball dish -- one without really any sauce at all -- piqued our interest.

And this dish from Cook's Country didn't disappoint.

We made this dish on a Tuesday night after work. We'd invited our friends Drew and Ralph over for dinner, and we wanted something tasty but not too time-intensive. This dish checked both of those boxes nicely -- although rolling out the individual meatballs themselves does take some time.

We made a couple substitutions here -- one purposefully and one accidentally.

First, to make this dish a bit healthier, we swapped in cauliflower rice for the long-grain white rice called for. We used one medium-sized head of cauliflower. That was perfect for the four of us. Using cauliflower did mean a couple other changes to the procedure, though. We used far less chicken broth, for one thing -- about 1 cup instead of the 3 1/4 cups called for in the recipe. Obviously you'd need that much liquid to cook white rice, but you just don't need it for cauliflower.

The other substitution? We forgot to buy fresh parsley, so we added some dried oregano into the meatball mixture for flavor. It turned out fine, but we bet the fresh parsley would have been even better.

All in all, we really liked this dish a lot. (Actually, we've already made it again since last week.) The lemon and the lack of sauce makes this a much lighter, springier meatball dish. The flavors are simple but clean and delicious.